I released pacman 2.1 today. It has new functionality to allows users to access multiple package repositories at the same time, including their own custom ones. This also allows us to open up the new 'unofficial' package repository which will eventually contain a ton of unsupported packages. This will give Archers a lot more packages to choose from without bloating Arch's official package set. Go team!

Real Life

Except for work, no news to report here. We're really busy with at work with the acquisition of a new network, so I'm working heavy overtime to move services/servers/networks around while trying to release our revamped flagship product after 8 months of development. And when this is all done I have to go back to school. :(

Whew... finally got the damn thing released. 0.3 (Firefly) is out doing its thing, and hopefully everything is a little better than it was in 0.2. The great thing about a young version like 0.3 is that you're allowed (nay, expected) to have some screw-ups. That makes my job a little less stressful.

Released pacman 2.0 today -- it will be on the mirrors tonight. I had to leave some things out until 2.1 so I can move on and start preparing for the Arch 0.3 release. I've been thru the hoops a few times now, so the release process is getting smoother and more defined.

I rebuilt the bootdisk set with 3 disks instead of two: one for kernel, one for modules, and one for the root filesystem. Works nicely and (theoretically) supports ide, scsi and pcmcia. The install program is also smoother.

I leave for a houseboat vacation tomorrow with all my coworkers. There will be copious amounts of beer, and my boss has forbidden me to bring the laptop to code on Arch. I didn't put up much of a fight. It's 30 degrees Celsius outside - coding isn't much of an option when you're on a houseboat in that heat.

Work

We finished rebuilding the new database server this morning. Now we're importing the 7gb database and hoping that MySQL's slave replication has been working.

Made an ABS update/sync script last night and fixed a couple small pacman2 bugs. That's two more things off the TODO list. Hopefully I can get 0.3 out in the next few weeks before things start getting REALLY busy.

School

*sigh* Registered for courses last night. I've been taking core courses for awhile now, so they want me to pick up some electives. I have no idea what to take. I guess I could take some easy intro courses so that I have more time in the Fall.

I'm a little worried about finding time for everything when school starts. Arch Linux, full-time school, part/full-time work, guitar, and then general fun. The numbers don't add up.

Don't you hate those mornings where you wake up tired? Ugh... Had a great time at a concert in Vancouver on the weekend. Went camping. Fell asleep under the stars, woke up under a heavy rainstorm. Spent the remaining hours of the night under a tarp, which was conveniently situated in the precise location where all rain water was collecting. Got up at 5:30 and went to Denny's. Normally I really dislike Denny's, but at 5:30am it's a godsend.

Arch Linux

I started some general handbook-type documentation for Arch yesterday. It's slow going, but I hope to have something substantial for the 0.3 release.

Work

Testing testing testing... We've spent the last 6 months revamping our main product and now we have to test the hell out of it. So my next two days will be spent writing scripts to generate random statistical data so I can import it into the system and make sure numbers don't get lost. This shouldn't really be my job, but we don't have any testers, so...

And while I was gone, it turns out that one of the drives in our main database server lost one of the RAID drives, so we need to move control to the slave db box until we can get the primary back to tip-top shape. This gives us the chance to move to a different filesystem too, since we're really pushing the 2gb file size limit in ext2.

Anybody have any good suggestions for a new filesystem? Do any of them work particularly well with RAID-1?

Well, I crammed a few more l'il features into pacman 2.0beta (might as well, while it's still un-released to the general public). Beta testers haven't reported any problems yet, and they seem quite pleased with the new features. The only part I'm not happy with is the performance of the db_find_conflicts() function, which has to search through all files in all packages in the database, looking for conflicts. It's an expensive operation with a multi-textfile database that I'm using. Everything has its trade-offs, I suppose.

Received some more positive feedback from a user today. I love that stuff. :) When you're an open-source programmer who doesn't make any money for his work, positive feedback and a general sense of pride and accomplishment are really the only returns you get on your hard work.

I've released pacman 2.0 beta to a select few Arch Linux users. I'm running it on all my workstations and it's smooth so far. A week or two of testing and it will be ready for release, though the new dependency logic isn't much use without a good dependency tree in the package set. *sigh* in time. The other AL developers are all busy with their real lives, so it's just me again, for now.

I'm hoping to get a 0.3 release out in the next 2-3 weeks. Then the plan is to release a pacman 2.1 which will have all the nifty features I didn't have time to get in 2.0.